When designing the Brick House, Nyborg for Realdania Byg, architects at design firm LETH & GORI asked themselves ‘What if a house can last at least five generations instead of two?’ The resulting property revisits materials and solutions from historic houses which have proven to be robust and have a long life span in order to generate a contemporary sustainable house.
Brick House is part of a development project titled Mini-CO2 houses initiated by the philanthropic foundation Realdania. The goal of Realdania’s project is to develop affordable sustainable houses with a low CO2 footprint.
A total of six houses have been built on a site in Nyborg, Denmark, each house with a different approach to how CO2 reduction can be achieved, for example by focusing on materials and building techniques or by aiding the inhabitants to reduce CO2.
Brick House has two main objectives: to create a house which is maintenance free for 50 years; and to create a house with a life span of minimum 150 years.
Brick House is based on a vision of a house that is alive and can breathe. This vision is realised by reducing the wall construction of the house to one material: clay. By using clay blocks and bricks a solid, homogeneous and simple outer wall is created.
This outer wall is open to diffusion, thus allowing the building to breathe just like the traditional solid brick houses that have proven to last. In addition, the reduction to one wall material reduces the number of joints between different materials and the potential building mistakes that these joints traditionally cause.
The solid brick walls result in a robust and healthy house with a long lifespan, good indoor climate and low maintenance.